“With your bondman’s right arm bare,
With his heart of black despair,
Stand alone, if stand ye dare!
“Onward with your fell design;
Dig the gulf and draw the line:
Fire beneath your feet the mine:
“Deeply, when the wide abyss
Yawns between your land and this,
Shall ye feel your helplessness.
“By the hearth, and in the bed,
Shaken by a look or tread,
Ye shall own a guilty dread.
“And the curse of unpaid toil,
Downward through your generous soil
Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
“Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,
Vines our rocks shall overgrow,
Plenty in our valleys flow;—
“And when vengeance clouds your skies,
Hither shall ye turn your eyes,
As the lost on Paradise!
“We but ask our rocky strand,
Freedom’s true and brother band,
Freedom’s strong and honest hand;
“Valleys by the slave untrod,
And the Pilgrim’s mountain sod,
Blessed of our fathers’ God!”
TO FANEUIL HALL
Written in 1844, on reading a call by “a Massachusetts Freeman” for a meeting in Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, without distinction of party, opposed to the annexation of Texas and the aggressions of South Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against slavery.
Men! if manhood still ye claim,
If the Northern pulse can thrill,
Roused by wrong or stung by shame,
Freely, strongly still;
Let the sounds of traffic die:
Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall,
Fling the axe and hammer by;
Throng to Faneuil Hall!
Wrongs which freemen never brooked,
Dangers grim and fierce as they,
Which, like couching lions, looked
On your fathers’ way;
These your instant zeal demand,
Shaking with their earthquake-call
Every rood of Pilgrim land,
Ho, to Faneuil Hall!
From your capes and sandy bars,
From your mountain-ridges cold,
Through whose pines the westering stars
Stoop their crowns of gold;
Come, and with your footsteps wake
Echoes from that holy wall;
Once again, for Freedom’s sake,
Rock your fathers’ hall!
Up, and tread beneath your feet
Every cord by party spun:
Let your hearts together beat
As the heart of one.
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,
Let them rise or let them fall:
Freedom asks your common aid,—
Up, to Faneuil Hall!
Up, and let each voice that speaks
Ring from thence to Southern plains,
Sharply as the blow which breaks
Prison-bolts and chains!
Speak as well becomes the free:
Dreaded more than steel or ball,
Shall your calmest utterance be,
Heard from Faneuil Hall!
Have they wronged us? Let us then
Render back nor threats nor prayers;
Have they chained our free-born men?
Let us unchain theirs!
Up, your banner leads the van,
Blazoned, “Liberty for all!”
Finish what your sires began!
Up, to Faneuil Hall!
TO MASSACHUSETTS
What though around thee blazes
No fiery rallying sign?
From all thy own high places,
Give heaven the light of thine!
What though unthrilled, unmoving,
The statesman stand apart,
